aug 12, 2024: a week in the life

this week

Yes, I kept to my word :) I started preparing for my first-year assessment this week, which included looking through transparent peer review reports from journals like the BMC family to determine what my assessors might ask me about my own research. It’s been a fruitful, though challenging, process, and I’m sure I’ll ideate even more questions in the coming week. I also completed a Nature Masterclasses course on peer review (highly recommend!) and continued to develop the Discussion section of my primary analysis. And I thought I’d finished my poster for my September conference, but I’ve just spotted some potential errors, so that’s a task for next Monday!

next week

First, I’ll submit my poster to conference organisers. Then, I plan to continue trying to find holes in my proposed analyses for my first-year assessment (they already appear Swiss-cheese-like). I will also develop proposals for a modelling study using English donor data, as well as an international collaboration that I hope will come to fruition in several months (or even years (!)). Finally, because some of my proposed analyses focus on long-term risks of cardiovascular disease, I will read up on the basic epidemiology and aetiology of this umbrella of diagnoses via the Nature Reviews Disease Primers series.

outside the lab

I had the pleasure of meeting up with a neighbour from my undergraduate degree who has just started a new job in Cambridge! I was fascinated to learn about her lab research on inter-mitochondrial communication and asked whether the mitochondria used WhatsApp.

on the reading list

Pescarini JM, Williamson E, Ichihara MY, Fiaccone RL, Forastiere L, Ramond A, Nery JS, Penna MLF, Strina A, Reis S, Smeeth L, Rodrigues LC, Brickley EB, Penna GO, Barreto ML. Conditional Cash Transfer Program and Leprosy Incidence: Analysis of 12.9 Million Families From the 100 Million Brazilian Cohort. Am J Epidemiol. 2020 Dec 1;189(12):1547-1558. doi: 10.1093/aje/kwaa127.

weekly photo

From an impromptu Saturday trip to West Cambridge’s Eddington neighbourhood, where many of my postdoc colleagues live and work.

about me

I’m Yaning (she/her), a PhD candidate in Public Health and Primary Care at the University of Cambridge. I am working with colleagues in the Blood and Transplant Research Unit, the Cardiovascular Epidemiology Unit, and NHS Blood and Transplant (England’s national blood service) to improve the safety and efficiency of voluntary whole blood donation. I’m supervised by the amazing Dr Lois Kim and funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research. This is my blog about my journey through this candidature, starting from nine months before my transfer of status. Please feel free to reach out at yw645 [at] cam [dot] ac [dot] uk!